Cassian town board moves draft of enhanced wake ordinance forward

The Cassian town board Monday voted to send a draft hazardous wake ordinance to town attorney Greg Harrold for review before sending it to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for a 60-day review there.

Jennifer Lepak with the Last Wilderness Alliance (LWA) was given the floor to speak on the matter by town chair Patty Francoeur, Lepak explaining to the town board the reason she and others feel the ordinance is necessary for Cassian and that is “to prevent invasive species from transported in and out of lakes in our area.”

“Also shorelines, docks, other issues that would come up with a lake bottom with sediment and everything  in a lake stirred up,” she said. “Our goal, as it’s been all the way through, is to have the town of Cassian put such an ordinance in place.”

The question Lepak said her group had is whether or not the town board intended to submit draft ordinance to the DNR for review.

With election day coming up on April 1 and Francoeur and town supervisor John Schaub not running for re-election, Lepak said it’s understood the current town board won’t be involved in whatever is finally approved once the ordinance has gone through the DNR’s 60-day review process. 

“Hopefully, by the time the new board comes in, they can make a decision whether or not they want to enact this ordinance,” she said. “The longer we wait, of course, pushes us back 60 days.”

During the town board discussion, Francoeur said the matter was brought up at last month’s meeting, the result of that being a draft ordinance town supervisor Dave Priegnitz put together that he said he’d sent to Lepak. 

“I got the edits back from Jennifer on what I drew up,” Priegnitz said and he suggested that Harrold review the draft before the town board did anything else with the ordinance. 

Schaub, elected to the town board in 2021, said there “were some surprises” left for he and others to deal with and he wasn’t in favor of leaving the enhanced wake ordinance for a new town board. 

“I think we should have everything checked out legally before we send it to the DNR,” Schaub said. “To make sure we cover ourselves.”

Priegnitz said he understands that the enforcement part of the enhanced wake ordinance is a concern “and always will be a concern no matter what.”

“My whole position was that it would be a deterrent, you know,” he said. “Even if we had an ordinance that was going to be hard to enforce ... if somebody wanted to fight any citation that we gave them in court that would be an expense to the town but then we’d have to prove their ballast tanks were full of water without inspecting the boat. How do you prove that? There’s a lot of concerns that I have about enforcement.”

Priegnitz said he understands why people want the ordinance. 

“I totally understand it,” he said. “We’re going to need one but somehow it needs to be done where we know we can have teeth to it that we can enforce it if we’re going to write a citation.”

Francoeur said it seemed to her the concern of Lepak and others wasn’t whether or not the town board likes the idea of the enhanced wake ordinance but, at this point, just get the 60-day DNR review process started. 

“In December when we had this discussion, I believe I said I wasn’t sending something to the DNR that we wouldn’t, as a town, want to approve,” she said. “That was my outlook on it at the time.”

Priegnitz recommended sending to Harrold the draft ordinance he wrote with the edits from Lepak. 

Lepak pointed out the enhanced wake ordinance issue was brought to the town in October of 2024, her group told then there would be a decision in December “and we still have not seen anything go forward with it to the attorney.”

“So, that’s where we’re sitting at,” she said. 

“We’ve had a lot of issues,” Priegnitz said. 

“It’s not our only issue in the town,” Francoeur added, a little more forcefully. “So, if we said December and it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen. That’s about all I can say.”

She said Schaub was absent from the December town board meeting .

“We decided we didn’t want to do anything without the full board present,” Francouer said.

Priegnitz made a motion to send the draft ordinance to Harrold for review and Schaub seconded. 

The vote was 2 to 1 with Francoeur the dissenting vote. 

There was some more discussion after the vote, with Schaub once again bringing up the enforcement concern.

He said the Wisconsin Towns Association has advised that towns looking at an enhanced wake ordinance should wait until the next session of the Wisconsin state legislature to convene as well as a new DNR secretary, Karen Hyun, coming in. 

“It’ll be interesting to hear what they have to say,” Schaub said. 

Jeff Meessmann, a member of the LWA board of directors, said there are existing Wisconsin statutes “that give the board the permission to enforce this ordinance.”

“You actually can select the people you want to enforce it,” he said. “It’s all spelled out in the statutes.”

Francoeur moved to the next agenda item, stating as she did the draft ordinance will be sent to Harrold for review.

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].